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Initiatives to scrub the Gulf of oil are moving forward. One method includes spraying chemicals to break up and sink globs of oil before the slick spreads to the shorelines—but using chemicals to clean up the ocean is controversial because the environmental consequences are unknown. The sea has its own way of handling the problem, but researchers worry that the water’s processes won’t act fast enough to save coastal shores from damage. Of course, science informs the debate. Here’s what happens on a molecular level when oil hits ocean water.

As soon as oil hits water, the ocean begins its deconstruction. In fact, the marine environment handles oil much like a human body handles alcohol: destroying, metabolizing and depositing the excessive compounds —in oil’s case, hydrocarbons—then transforming the compounds into safer substances, says Stanislav Patin, chairman of the Aquatic Toxicology Committee under the Russian Academy of Sciences and international expert on marine pollution. Read more —

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that it will put more stringent restrictions on mountaintop-removal coal mining, capping the allowed salinity levels and metal and mineral content of waterways near mines. While the main environmental concern of mountaintop mining has been the aftereffects on the watershed and downstream runoff, there is a consequence that is often ignored: restoring mined lands left vulnerable to landslides, floods and growth dead zones. To bring back stable forests and traditional ecosystems that are safe for surrounding land and homes, scientists, environmental groups and coal companies are using software tools and simple gardening techniques that best fit a geographic region’s troubled landscape. Read more —

NASA has a proven track record of space imaging prowess—the success of the Hubble and Kepler telescopes in capturing the farthest reaches of space proves this. The problem? Hubble alone has cost about $9.6 billion to taxpayers since its launch in 1990. In short, telescopes are expensive. So how can NASA deliver the same high-quality galactic images and information for less?

Chuck Hailey, a professor of physics at Columbia University, has one answer—cheaper lenses. Hailey has developed a method of glass assembly that allows scopes to focus more intensely at a tenth of the cost. The method is cheap and proven for ground-based telescopes, but the real test remains: surviving the intense cold, heat and tumult of a space mission launch. Read more —

The Air Force is racing to break down the thousands of gallons of oil released from the oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana with sprays of chemicals—but is there another best way? In its May 1991 issue, Popular Mechanics covered SeaClean, a revolutionary vessel built for cleaning deep-sea oil spills. The problem? It was never built because of its $100 million pricetag.

Louisiana-based Schellstede and Associates designed the 4000-ton crude-oil carrier that could pump oil at 38,000 gallons per minute, one with submerged pontoons to make it unfazed by 23-foot-tall waves. Exxon Valdez turned down the pricey vessel after its oil spill off Alaska in 1989, but could this tech have been worth the investment? Read more —

Goldie Byrd is a people person. After beginning her career studying the genetics of E. coli and microplasma, the biologist from Magnolia, N.C., shifted gears to study human genetics, specifically in Alzheimer’s, because it runs in her family.

Since the start of her Alzheimer’s work in 2003, Byrd, now chair of the department of biological sciences at N.C. A&T State University, has focused on the African-American population. In the beginning, she studied the science; now she also looks at the social factors and perceptions about health studies in the African-American community. Read more —

The FIRST Robotics national championships in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome on Saturday proved the World Cup of robot soccer. High school teams from around the world faced off in front of a stadium full of onlookers, maneuvering their bots over bumps and under tunnels while kicking to score goals and winching themselves up to hang from towers for a couple of extra points. Of the 344 bots duking it out, only one three-team alliance could make it to the top, and PM was thick in the action, sorting out the best bots this build season: Would eight wheels manage better than four? Did hanging trump kicking ability in the final matches? Here are our top three picks whose design, ball-driving ability and feisty field-play show what FIRST engineering is all about. Read more —

Online astronomy platforms have revolutionized a traditional hobby, one in which trekking to a dark spot in the country with a star map used to be the ultimate stargazer experience. Some online sites post images from powerful telescopes around the world; others let viewers take control of the scopes. They all offer novice celestial viewers a look at the galaxy that even the best home telescope will miss. Space has never looked so good. Here’s a guide for a trip around the cosmos. Read more –

On March 14 in New York City, 64 teams of high school students went head to head in the metro-area showdown of the national FIRST Robotics Competition. For many, it was the high-energy culmination—complete with mascots and a drum corps—of a six-week build period, in which students had to create robots capable of competing in what was essentially a game of soccer.

Some robots performed exactly as the teams hoped they would, kicking balls into goals for commanding leads; others met unexpected challenges while trying to cross steep bumps in the middle of the field or raise themselves up on a tower for extra bonus points. Throughout the day, the teams competed in alliances of three that were randomly assigned. But for the finals, the top-seeded teams got to choose their alliance-mates, and so many assigned team scouts to assess the competition. Read more —

Thousands of miles from his Southern university, Tim Shaw works to discover how glaciers’ melting affects the pace of global warming. Shaw, professor of chemistry at the University of South Carolina, analyzes the composition of icebergs that have calved from the main ice mass of Antarctica.

On expeditions in 2005, 2008 and 2009 aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer icebreaker ship, and in future trips, Shaw seeks icebergs’ footprints — their unique trail left behind as they float through the ocean, melting as they drift. It turns out those icebergs carry a lot more than ice, and their trail includes significant amounts of iron. Read more —

The Toy Industry Association’s International Toy Fair is the place where toy store buyers go annually to take their pick of the latest entertainment innovations. We got a chance to walk around the showroom floor this weekend and check out what the kids will be clamoring for in 2010. Here are 12 high-tech toys that we want right now. Read more —

A transformer from Consolidated Edison (Con Ed), New York City’s sole electricity supplier, exploded from beneath the sidewalk in an underground vault yesterday, creating a fiery blast that shattered windows multiple stories high. Though no injuries were reported, offices and stores at the corner of 20th Street were left smoldering.

Investigators are still trying to answer the question: Just what lead this transformer to explode?

Electrical transformers transfer energy between circuits, switching energy from one voltage to another. But when flooded with too much electricity, the sudden surge can cause a transformer explosion. As transformers detect an energy spike, they’re programmed to turn off, but it can take up to 60 milliseconds for the shutdown. However fast those milliseconds may seem, they still may be too slow to stop the electrical overload. Read more —

Before the clatter of capsules against childproof caps came the whispering fields of medicinal plants – fields Nadja Cech knows very well.

Cech, 31, grew up on an organic farm in Oregon where her family tended medicinal herbs. Now she’s an associate professor of chemistry at UNC Greensboro, studying how and why plants, such as echinacea, work as medicine in the body. She gathers plants across North Carolina, and sometimes from her family farm out West, to analyze back in her lab at UNCG. Read more —

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania unveiled the world’s first solar-powered circuit in a January edition of ACS Nano. The technology shows particular promise for touchscreen devices, which could use the circuits as a direct source for sun-power. Not to be confused with solar cells, which convert sunlight energy to electricity and store it for later, this breakthrough involves circuits—electrical devices that provide paths for electricity to flow. This means that sunlight absorbed by the device can immediately use the energy to power the device.

Here’s how the circuit works: Electrons, here known as surface plasmons, oscillate on tiny molecules called nanoparticles. These plasmons act as a ‘super lenses,’ which gather all solar light hitting the circuit. Once the light’s collected, the particles pose as electrodes to ferry away the electricity for a device to use. Read more —

Animal invaders have bridged oceanic gaps for centuries—some stowed away in ship-ballast water while others were intentionally lugged over by the overzealous, either to solve a pre-existing problem or just for aesthetic pleasure. However, sometimes a seemingly benign introduction creates environmental travesty and ecosystem despair.

“Invasive species have been a problem as long as America has existed as a nation,” says Thom Cmar of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). However, Cmar says that as transportation into the country has become more advanced, more invasive species have come in on boats and planes, thus worsening the problems posed to ecosystems. Read more —

Dreams of off-the-shelf high-speed personal submarines came closer to a reality today when Hawkes Ocean Technologies, the creator of the Super Falcon personal submersible, announced it would team up with Virgin Galactic entrepreneur Richard Branson to build the next-gen winged exploration vessel. Read more —

Though it’s been 60 years since the boom of organ transplantation began, researchers still haven’t found a way to prevent the body’s immune system from aggressively attacking donor organs. But they haven’t stopped trying. With advances in technology and new techniques for transplantation, the medical community hopes the body’s misguided defense system—which perceives a donor organ as foreign and, therefore, dangerous—will soon concede defeat to science.

About 77 organ transplants are performed each day in the U.S., and more than 101,000 people are on a wait list for body parts such as hearts, skin and veins, according to the Mayo Clinic. But even for those lucky 77, complications are worrisomely common. Forty percent of lungs, for example, are rejected within the first year of surgery. Read more —

Renewable energy is no longer limited to large-scale wind turbines and solar panels; countless gadgets are now on the market to make life just a little more sustainable without the pain and inconvenience of constructing a hydroelectric dam in your backyard. Here are seven products—some prototypes, some actually for sale—that gather energy as they serve their purpose. Read more —

Amy Ringwood shucks oysters for a living. But instead of prying open an oyster shell and popping the juicy morsel into her mouth, she takes out its guts.

Ringwood, an environmental toxicologist at UNC Charlotte, studies how trace levels of chemicals in seawater affect the health of oysters and other filter-feeding organisms at a cellular level. She collects oysters and strips them of their gill tissues and functional liver, or hepatopancreas, to search their insides for pollutants such as heavy metals, organic compounds, and more recently, the nonliving microscopic pieces known as nanoparticles. Read more —

For the first time, Britain’s Royal Society recently opened online access to an 18th-century handwritten manuscript detailing Sir Isaac Newton’s life, including his inspiration for the theory of gravity, to mark the institution’s 350th anniversary.

One of the most notable revelations to come from the manuscript, which was written by William Stukeley, a friend of Newton, and published in 1752, is the documentation of how Newton’s theory of gravity came to be. The story of Newton’s apple-tree revelation has become folklore in the past 250 years, complete with embellishments and twists of historical fact. Read more —

Protecting your pavement from the harsh effects of winter ice and summer heat can be smart home maintenance—if you’re not coating your driveway with carcinogens. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that coal-tar pavement sealant, typically used east of the Continental Divide, contains 1000 times more polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are by-products of fuel burning, than its asphalt-based counterpart used throughout the West. What’s more, these known cancer-causing compounds might be tracked indoors. Read more —

On January 12, around dinnertime, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, decimating the island nation and leaving hundreds of thousands presumed dead. A rescue effort is underway, but as government officials and rescue agencies sort through the rubble, it is worth asking: Could this tragedy have been prevented? Read more —

William Conner never expected to ride around Winston-Salem in a cherry picker on the prowl for bats. Truth be told, he’s more of a moth kind of guy.

But after the Wake Forest University professor of biology spent 10 years unsuccessfully nudging his students to study how moths and bats acoustically communicate, he took matters into his own hands.

Now, he not only has a bat house under the eave of his two-story home, he’s launching a project to teach local children about acoustics and was the first to discover a new strategy some moths have evolved to fend off bat predators. Read more —

In science, it’s exceedingly rare when the naked eye usurps modern technology—powerful telescopes offer humans unprecedented views of celestial phenomena, surgeons can send tiny cameras inside your intestinal tract and even iPhone apps can spot public restrooms before you can. However, for the paleontologists who routinely discover new dinosaurs, a good set of eyes, geological know-how and a little luck remain the best tools.

“[Finding dinosaurs] still comes down to people walking around the ground and looking,” says Don Henderson, researcher and Curator of Dinosaurs at Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada. “A lot of it is accidental.” Read more —

Erectile dysfunction treatments like Viagra may help desire to flare, but these oral medications are not without side effects. New research suggests that a nanoparticle-based topical therapy could bring all of the pleasure with none of the adverse repercussions.

By injecting the same erectile dysfunction drugs found in oral treatments into nanoparticles, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx say they have found a way to bypass the side effects of oral medication for erectile dysfunction, or ED, according to a paper published last month in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Read more —

The general consensus goes, biofuels: good, dead zones: bad. But what if these two came to a murkier middle ground? They do in the Gulf of Mexico where dead zones, areas in the ocean that lack oxygen, pervade. Read more —

Elinor Ostrom knows how to manage money, resources and pretty much the whole globe. The first woman to win the Nobel prize in economics, along with fellow scholar Oliver Williamson, tackles everything from the global financial crisis to local resource management, and looks at it in terms of climate change. And for all of this, she isn’t even an economist. Read more —

Power outages and darkness, with the exception of nighttime slumber, cause me to panic and experience a fairly severe level of psychological distress. In fact, as a kid, nocturnal games like “Hide and Seek” and “Sardines” caused me to avoid sleepovers.

Like lukewarm coffee or a leaky faucet, science labs can be frustrating. Three hours spent titrating, peering through a microscope and categorizing specimens combine to fulfill a lab science requirement – all for naught, or so it seems.

Why take a lab at all? Why not just cling to the sanctity of science lectures without application? Read more —

Though he didn’t receive a gold statuette Sunday night, Joseph DeSimone won the “Oscars for Inventors.” Like Eli Whitney and Thomas Jefferson, DeSimone, chancellor’s eminent professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and winner of the 2008 Lemelson-MIT prize, stands at the cusp of creative scientific innovation. The self-proclaimed engineer and inventor spoke to an auditorium full of students and faculty in Sims last Wednesday, sharing several of his 115 patents.

Growing multiple heads is all in a day’s work for Julian Smith, associate professor of biology. Collecting samples from Winthrop Lake, Smith studies two species of fast-growing asexual flatworms, primitive invertebrates, to gain insight into their stem cells. In these seemingly immortal animals, stem cells divide and differentiate to form muscle, skin and other types of cells as the organism needs them. Read more —

Obama recently nominated several giants to top science advisory positions under his administration, including Harvard physicist John Holdren, who spent much of his career in energy and environmental research. Holdren will fill the seat of White House science advisor. Read more —

Death and birth keep the health care industry afloat in troubled economic times.

Though Circuit City and Linens n’ Things are among companies filing bankruptcy, the health care industry continues to grow, currently composing 17 percent of the gross domestic product in the United States and predicted to increase to 25 percent by 2025, according to Keith Benson, associate professor and program director of health care management.

“People will always be born and people will always die,” said Benson. Read more —

You might say Pravda Stoeva-Popova’s aptitude for genetics is in her genes.

Hailing from Bulgaria, Stoeva’s father studied science, specifically plants, and from a young age Stoeva knew she wanted to be immersed in scientific process.

“I always really wanted to do research,” Stoeva said.

Interested in the scientology of plants, Stoeva pursued a PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics and began work in the genetics field, later to transition to genetic engineering.

Stoeva began working with tomatoes and tobacco, studying new techniques of tissue culture by growing cells separate from an organism, a brick foundation in the wall of cloning. Read more —

Paula Mitchell, professor of biology, began her zoology career at the “back end of a lizard” but has descended down the food chain to study entomology, or bugs.

Mitchell’s lab, composed of three student researchers (and a pet Madagascar hissing cockroach) studies three main species of insects: the Southern Green Stink bug, Leaf-footed bug and Squash bug.

The lab studies the feeding habits of the bugs in hopes to uncover patterns. Once patterns of feeding are found, anti-feedants can be discovered to keep the bugs off prized plants and crops. Read More —

Jason Hurlbert, assistant professor of chemistry, is working on a puzzle. This puzzle contains 3,600 pieces and is too small to be seen with the eye. Hurlbert’s puzzle pieces are atoms, used to build protein molecules.

If only determining protein structure was as simple as a jigsaw puzzle. Read more —

Melissa Reeves remembers her exact location eight years ago when she received a frantic page from her mother. It was around lunchtime, and Reeves was in the hallway of an elementary school in Columbine, Colo.

Reeves, of the psychology department at Winthrop, was among the first responders to the event now known as the Columbine High School Massacre, the fourth deadliest school killing in U.S. history.

What Columbine instilled for school districts in 1999, the Virginia Tech tragedy instilled for universities. Read more —

When her 33-year-old sister Suzy was diagnosed with breast cancer, Nancy Brinker promised to do everything in her power to promote breast cancer research. In 1982, two years after her sister’s death, Nancy founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in honor of Suzy. Read more —

One morning while extracting trace amounts of caffeine from tea leaves in an organic chemistry lab, I decided I no longer wanted to be a scientist.

Writing lab reports, using stirring rods and maneuvering pipets no longer held the same glamour. Still, it was the action that turned my head. I continued to crave science.

A few months passed, and here I sit at my white MacBook attempting to explain why I care about science. My mind wanders to the tall, non-fat caramel macchiato perched near the edge of my desk. Read more–